


Climb Every Mountain

by Lightbringer34



Category: Warhammer 40.000, Warhammer 40k (Novels) - Various Authors
Genre: Angron is such a fascinating character, Character Study, Other, Warhammer 40k - Freeform, i feel like the Emperor takes every opportunity to make inside jokes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:14:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25245976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lightbringer34/pseuds/Lightbringer34
Summary: Angron's last night on Nuceria is grim, but he meets someone unexpected.
Relationships: Angron & The Emperor (WH40k)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 23





	Climb Every Mountain

The mountains of Nuceria were vast granite cliffs, tall black stone bared to the wind, raw bones exposed to time and turmoil. To Angron, it was a fitting place to die.  
He stood on an outcropping a hundred meters above the escarpment where his City Eaters had made camp, the lights of campfires reflecting off his dark skin and throwing each movement of his muscles into sharp relief. The silver tassels of the high-riders glimmered in his hair as the gladiator general moved through the forms of the Gulthan, the training exercises scarred into him during captivity. The black stone in front of him steadily shattered under his ministrations and soon it was stained with blood, but Angron did not mind. To one such as him, blood was simply a facet of life, as regular and as expected as the rising of the sun or the toll of the noonday bell. Nonetheless, the destruction was of use, the movement and crashing sound of fist upon rock confined the fire of the Butcher’s Nails to a slow smolder in his mind, enough to let the general think freely.

He had the advantage of hight and his friends knew they were cornered and so would fight all the harder, lashing out even with a sword in their guts. He’d seen it countless times in the arena, when an opponent, bleeding out or missing a limb, mad a last desperate attack fuled by vengeance and rage. The only difference was the handlers then had to clean up two bodies instead of one, while the high-borns cheered and clapped as they always did. Angron’s breath exploded from his lungs as he brought his foot down in an overhead movement that cleaved a crater into the remnants of the mountainside and caused heads to turn below, searching for the source of the gunshot. 

Chest heaving and steam rolling off of him in waves, Angron looked down the slope and waved at the sentries, something like an apology and an acknowledgement. Far away, a young man with a fire -pike and scarcely two dozen knots on his rope saluted the figure above him and grinned in response. The general’s eyes narrowed, keen sight reading the etchwork scratched into the collar of the breastplate. Themiscan, a middling gladiator scooped up in the City Eater’s raid on the southern coast, when they’d set cities to blaze and sent the high-riders scurrying in shame as they sent guards to die on Angron’s axes.

In the beginning, Angron took pride in knowing the names of every gladiator and every soldier who fought beside him. He would roar those names as he cleaved through guards, security, and enemy soldiers, each strike a small payment for the debts the high-riders would never pay themselves. But he had been too successful to keep that up for long. Now the number of dead extended far beyond what he could remember, especially with the Nails clouding his mind, veiling his thoughts. He had learned to account for these rages, sending himself as a battering ram or a distraction, a wall of flesh and metal and death that killed and killed and drew the eyes of all around. It meant that blows would strike him instead of his brothers and sisters, that forces meant to reinforce the upper wall were redirected to the western gate. Angron had taken this torture and turned it into a tool, a hammer that burned him even as he wielded it at those who had forged both it and him for bloodsport. 

As he did this, his armies began to grow. Men and women flocked to him, freed or fighting through doubled gladiatorial guards to pledge their swords and shields to his cause. They died for him and he could not remember their names. Angron turned and walked further up the mountainside, ignoring the sharp spurs and rough gravel. He wanted to have a truly unobstructed view, so that he could plainly see the doom that awaited him and the City-Eaters. He was halfway up the cliffside whn he heard clanking armour and the huffing sound that signified a messenger unused to heavy armour. Another empty suit, given by one who no longer needed it to a dead man walking. Angron grunted and swung sideways to grab a promising handhold, only for it to crumble under his grip. With suprise, the general tumbled back to the cliff below, landing with a harsh crunch that made him gasp as the wind was knocked out of him. As mighty as he was, even gladiator-generals need to breathe. So it was that a weathered soldier reached the top of the cliff to find his general lying prone upon the black rock, forcing air into his lungs. 

At once, the man dropped his weapons and made to help his general, but Angron shook his head and waved an arm at the discarded spear. The man groaned in recognition and scrambled to retrieve his weapons as the general managed to regain the power of speech. 

"Tell me son,“ rumbled Angron in a chiding tone, "will you forget your weapons so easily tomorrow? You won’t be able to help me if you’ve been spitted three ways from Thraksday.” The man shook his head, blue eyes peering out from a bronzed, weatherbeaten face and dirty blonde hair. “I still would my lord. For you, for Angron the Breaker of Chains, they would have to spit me thirty times before I would refuse to help you.” He gave a cautious grin. “Not like those fancy skakkers can aim worth a damm.” Angron grinned as well and the rare rumble of their captain’s laughter rolled across the army below like the ecoes of a thunderstorm, causing more than one gladiator to hunch over their campfires and cast a glare at the treacherous sky. 

"That may be so Son of the Games,“ mused Angron, his brow furrowing in anger and thought, "but seven thousand spears do not all need to hit for them to ruin us tomorrow, and I cannot think of a way that we can win.” Suprisingly, the solder’s face did not fall at the possibility of defeat. Angron raised his eyebrows in suprise. “You do not fear death?” The man shook his head, tightening his hands on his spear. “Not at all milord. Not even for an instant." 

Angron cast him a wry look and sat up, curling his knees into his chest and leaning back. "You should fear it,you know. I’ve heard it’s very unpleasant.” The soldier looked back at him, voice steady and spear ponting upwards. “I only know death through a chain of distant acquitances, most of them very short and one-sided." 

Angron now gave the soldier his full attention. "You strike me as a curious soul to charge up and meet Angron the Destroyer on the eve of his final battle. Tell me, what is your name, son of the Games?” The stranger stood straight and saluted. “I am Spartacus, sir." 

Angron shuffled backon his hands and knees until his pack was pressed against the cooling stone of the mountain and he could look out over the setting sun of Nuceria. "Why did you join my army, Spartacus?”

"I came to meet Angron the Chain-Breaker and see if his cause was truly a fight for freedom, rather than the lies Lord Voxstes and his ilk spoke of. I saw that here was a chance to change things on Nuceria for the better, to give these men and women a better life.“ 

Angron frowned. "And are you disappointed? To have traveled all this way and fought for your freedom, only to now have it come to ashes around us, trapped in these mountains?” Spartacus said nothing, rolling his spear between his hands and staring down at the masses of humanity below them. Eventually he turned back to the general. 

“Tell me, lord Angron, why were you attempting to climb the rest of the mountain?” Angron had drawn in upon himself, his hands clenching and unclenching the stones between his fingers, kneading the harsh rock into gravel with the power of his muscles alone, but Spartacus’s voice shook him out of whatever inner fortress he had occupied. 

“Why else would I climb the mountain? To seek the enemy, to gauge their strength, and to search for better terrain." 

"What about the stars, milord?" 

"The stars? What use are the stars to me now?” growled Angron, his voice rising. “I cannot pluck them out of the sky to hurl upon my enemies, nor can I summon them to blaze and burn the foe, so they are of no use to me. We will all die tomorrow and the stars cannot stop it, no matter what the priests tell you Spartacus.” Something emenated from Angron that might have been a muffled scream or a sob, though perhaps it was simply the grinding of teeth. “Though soon I will return to the campfires to sleep and await the break of day as will every gladiator here, when the time comes, we will all be alone on this mountain. Alone and dead, comforted only by the bodies in our wake." 

Spartacus’s eyes remained fixed upon the camp below. "And is that a comfort to you, knowing that your death will be bought with the lives of others?” Suddenly Angron’s hand was at his throat and the soldier found himself slammed into the mountainside. He felt his armor crack along the metal inseam where it had been welded together and he could see only his general’s face, twisted by rage, hate, and sorrow. “You think I want this? That I want to end my days on the spears of lesser men with my friends dead behind me? You think the dead I leave in my wake are a mark of pride?" 

He shook Spartacus up and down, sending the man’s head rattling as his helmet dropped down the rocks below. "I remember every high-born I ever killed, and I kept their silver threads. Twined ‘em into my own hair, to remind them who they’re fighting. Angron, the Butcher, the Destroyer, the Chain-Breaker! I ask for no quarter and I recieve none myself! I remember every man who dies around me, covered in dust. Every woman whose limbs failed her at the end. I remember it all, Spartacus.” He tossed the gasping soldier to the rock, pressing his fingers to his metal-capped skull. “I remember everything until these Nails come and take everything away. The names, the cities, the combats, even my own name!” Angron glared off into the distance, towards the mountain pass where the soldiers, the skakking high-born scum waited, as he did, for the sun. “And that I why I look for tomorrow, so that we can carve one last bloody swathe through their sons, so that generations from now men will look at their lineage and say, 'there was Angron the Destroyer, who killed my sire’s sire and all his sons.’ Then they will curse my name and I will be glad of it. Because maybe there will be other men like me who hear those curses, who will rise up and maybe then my work will be completed." 

His wrath spent for the moment, Angron turned back and offered his massive hand. "What do you say to that, Spartacus, son of the sands?” Spartacus blinked in suprise and took the general’s callused arm, gripping it by the forearm in the manner of ancient war-brothers. “I say we should climb the mountain." 

The general waited as Spartacus discarded his armor and spear then as one, they moved towards the black wall. If the climb was difficult for Angron, who was taller and stronger than all his soldiers, he expected it to be impossible for his companion. And indeed, there were several treacherous sections where the rock crumbled underneath them, or the wind plucked at their clothes and threatened to sweep the general of the City Eaters to his death. But his companion climbed at a slow but steady pace, methodically testing the stone around him as Angron leaped up and hacked away at sheer cliff to form handholds where none existed. Halfway up, where two jutting points provided momentary shelter from the gathering wind at such an altitude, Angron turned to his companion. "How did you come to climb so well, Spartacus? Truthfully, I would have expected you to be dead by now. Perhaps your longevity will aid you tomorrow, eh?" 

Spartacus gave a strained grin as he eased his body into a wedge of stone for a moment’s respite. "Did you think I was always a gladiator, Angron? Nay, I was once a miner, a common laborer in the fountains. I know stone as well as any old goat.” He shook his head. “Come, we are nearly there!” They resumed their climb, but this time, Angron imitated the soldier’s movements, feeling the strength of the rock with his callused hands and curling his sandals into stable fissures. With a final heave, Angron the Chain-Breaker reached the top of the mountain and saw the true state of his situation. 

The campfires of his City-Eaters blazed away below him, hundreds strong, but beyond lay the armies of the high-riders, and their campfires numbered in the thousands. He could see the glimmering lights of a city just beyond the horizon, the doubtless still-smoking ruins that he had been driven out of a week before. Night had fallen long ago, and the mountains around them were vast and indistinct, formless masses surrounding him just as the blazing lights of his enemies had. Angron balled his fists and turned. “What did you expect me to see here, you fool!” he bellowed. “There is no goat path to sneak around, no culvert to stem the tide of the enemy. We will march down that plateau tomorrow and die, and all we can hope for is a good death and a good story." 

Spartacus smiled and in the lessening darkness, the white flash of his grin seemed to glow. "Look up, Breaker of Chains, and you will have your answer." 

Angron angled his neck upwards and he saw the stars. For the thousands of lights on the plain below him, there were a million more up here, small lights sparking defiance against the surrounding blackness. And as he watched, some of the stars began to glow brighter and brighter. Then they began to grow. Mouth open in astonishment, Angron watched the stars fall to his aid, landing with thunder and light around the furthest encampments of the high-riders and disgorging white and blue armored soldiers. And as he turned, another star blazed into existence on the mountaintop, golden light blazing forth as the first disc of the sun rose behind him. 

"Good morning, Angron of Nuceria.” said the Emperor of Mankind with a wry grin. “I have plucked the stars from the sky, just as you suggested, and set them upon the enemy. I think that makes up for a good twenty years worth of missed birthdays. Now, I believe we had best get off this peak, or else your warriors will take all the glory. And we have much to do after that.” Angron’s grin was beyond description. “Oh yes.” he said, voice filled with relish. “Yes we do.”

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to structure the story and dialogue like an old saga, because it fit the theme of the Primarchs being larger-than-life, almost like living parables. Vulkan and Russ have similar stories, where the mysterious stranger in disguise is testing them and I thought it would fit Angron's aesthetic as well.


End file.
